Principal Engineer, Scalable DB Infrastructure

Amazon Web Services (AWS); Redmond (WA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 271,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon.com Services LLC in Redmond is seeking a Principal Engineer to own architecture and drive strategy for scalable, fault-tolerant database services used by millions of customers. You will lead end-to-end design, prototype early concepts, and mentor engineers across teams.

You will engage with customers, shape roadmaps, and push the boundaries of AI-enabled databases, including Aurora, DynamoDB, DocumentDB, Neptune, and more.

Qualifications

• Track record of technical decisions that held up at scale and under pressure.
• Ability to prototype to learn, ship to validate, and iterate quickly.
• Influence without authority and earn trust through technical credibility.
• Experience working across organizational boundaries to drive outcomes.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity with a bias toward action.
• Curiosity about how AI is changing database engineering and architecture.

Responsibilities

• Define architecture for services that must be highly available and scalable.
• Drive technical strategy across service areas, shaping roadmaps and investments.
• Solve distributed systems challenges and design robust failure models.
• Build, prototype, and ship production systems trusted by large enterprises.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews and technical judgment.
• Engage with customers to translate learnings into better architecture.
• Invent and evaluate emerging technologies to push database capabilities, including AI reshapes.

Skills

Technical credibility

Prototyping

Influence without authority

Cross-org collaboration

Ambiguity tolerance

AI awareness

Tools

Distributed systems

Database internals

Storage engines

Query optimization

Replication protocols

Consensus algorithms

High‑performance systems

Job description

Amazon.com Services LLC in Redmond is seeking a Principal Engineer to own architecture and drive strategy for scalable, fault-tolerant database services used by millions of customers. You will lead end-to-end design, prototype early concepts, and mentor engineers across teams.

You will engage with customers, shape roadmaps, and push the boundaries of AI-enabled databases, including Aurora, DynamoDB, DocumentDB, Neptune, and more.